MÓNICA PONCE DE LEÓN, AIA, NCARB, Arquitectos Legacy Award Winner 2025

Founding Principal of MPdL Studio

VIRTUAL PRESENTER: WEDNESDAY SEPT 23 4:30-5:30pm

(Link will be provided by email in September after registration)

More about Mónica Ponce de León,

Mónica Ponce de León is the founding principal of MPdL Studio and the George Dutton ’27 Professor in Architecture with the School of Architecture at Princeton University.

Among her many honors, Ponce de León received the National Design Award in Architecture from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum. She has also been honored with the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the USA Target Fellow in Architecture and Design from United States Artists, and the Young Architects and Emerging Voices awards from the Architectural League of New York. Her highly acclaimed and broadly published work has received 13 Progressive Architecture (P/A) Awards, 14 awards from the American Institute of Architects, including the AIA Institute Honor Award for Architecture, as well as the prestigious Harleston Parker Medal from the Boston Society of Architects. Ponce de León was inducted into the National Academy of Design in 2016 and elected as a new member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2026.

Known as an educational force, Ponce de León currently teaches at Princeton University where she served as Dean of the School of Architecture from 2016 through 2025. From 2008 through 2015, she was the dean of Taubman College at the University of Michigan. For over 12 years, Ponce de León taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, where she became a professor and served as the Graduate Program coordinator and was director of the Digital Fabrication Lab. Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Ponce de León was an assistant professor at Northeastern University. She has been a visiting professor or scholar at various institutions across the United States, including SCI-Arc, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Miami, as well as Georgia Tech. At Georgia Tech, she was the first Thomas W. Ventulett III Distinguished Chair in Architectural Design. In recognition of her extraordinary contributions in academia, in 2018 Ponce de León received ACADIA’s distinguished teaching award, and in 2020 received the Architectural Record Women in Architecture Award for Educator/Mentor.

Ponce de León has a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, as well as a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami.